Hiroshima: 40 Years Later A New Age Was Born On That Horrible Day

The events of Aug. 6, 1945, have been retold many times. But somehow they never lose their impact.

An American B-29 circles over the city of Hiroshima. Named the Enola Gay, it carries in its bomb bay "Little Boy," an ungainly 9,000-pound weapon that is about to change the world.

Below, the city of several hundred thousand begins its daily ritual of getting to work in this, the fourth year of war with America. Schoolchildren line up for class, office workers board streetcars, and stay-at-homes enjoy another cup of tea. By city clocks, it is 8:15 a.m.

Suddenly a blinding flash of light turns the sky white with the brillance of the sun. A maximum temperature of several million degrees centigrade radiates over the city. An explosive force equal to 13 kilotons of TNT turns steel, wood and human flesh to dust. Radiation burns scar the bodies of those unlucky enough to be caught in it. Fires burn out of control, hospitals have no doctors and most of the city is either dead or dying. What only minutes before had been a complex social organization is reduced to chaos.

History has few moments that can stand alone. The collective follies and triumphs of humanity, if not predictable, are at least understandable in human terms. But the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 40 years ago dwarfs any other event of our time.

It is not that what happened on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 of 1945 is without historical context. The Japanese Empire of the 1930s and '40s was an expansionist power bent on the conquest of the Far East and Pacific. The United States, with interests of its own in that part of the world, was in the way. The bloody clash that resulted when these powers squared off was, given the logic of nations, inevitable. To end that war with the least loss of life to its armed forces, the United States used the ultimate weapon. The doctrine of total war had created a means of total destruction.

But mankind cannot dismiss the subject that simply. The nuclear age was born that morning. To say the world has never been the same again is a cliche weighted with truth. Since 1945, we have lived under the shadow of the peace of mutual annihilation. For better or worse, all of our lives have been shaped by that moment on an August day 40 years ago.

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President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb is still controversial. And how one feels about the decision depends on which historians one looks at.

The prevailing view has been that the American military and civilian leadership were required to drop the bomb. Japan in 1945, say these writers, was a nation of fanatics willing to die for the Emperor. The only other way to put an end toJapanese military power and force them to accept unconditional surrender was to invade Japan itself.

Planners for the invasion knew it would be a bloody one. It was estimated that up to a million casualties could be expected. It is argued that although the Japanese navy and air force was destroyed, its army had yet to be touched. And the invasions of Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other Pacific islands had proven how tough that army could be.

This is why at the Yalta conference in April 1945, the United States was so anxious to have the Soviet Union come into the war against Japan. Japanese diplomat Toshikazu Kase wrote in 1950 that even after the first atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese generals were not about to give one inch to an invader. They were, he says, "as ever, riding on a hot steed headlong to self-destruction." That's why, some historians argue, the United States had no choice but to use the bomb twice.

Others contend that Japan was already on the ropes by the summer of 1945. There was a strong peace party in Japan, they say, that was attempting to modify the unconditional surrender terms of the allies. If the United States could have reassured them about the fate of the Emperor, the war would have been over.

They cite statements by Admiral William Leahy, Truman's chief of staff, who wrote in his diary on June 18, 1945, "It is my opinion at the present time that a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America's defense against trans-Pacific aggression."

In his 1965 book, "Atomic Diplomacy," Gar Alperovitz takes this logic a step further. He contends that the war was virtually over by August 1945 and that Truman and his secretary of State, James Byrnes, knew it. They were primarily interested in dropping the bomb, Alperovitz contends, to show Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that America had a weapon of great power and was not afraid to use it. In the current issue of Sojourners magazine, Alperovitz points to newly released evidence that backs up his theory.